DAZED AND CONFUSED (1991)
A film review by Andrew Hicks
Copyright 1996 Andrew Hicks / Fatboy Productions
1991, *** (out of four)
I wasn't alive in 1976, I've never been high or drunk in my life and I have a high I.Q. So why would I like DAZED AND CONFUSED? I'm not quite sure, but I did. Maybe it's because deep inside me, beneath the layers of contempt for the brain-dead, give- peace-a-chance potheads running around the dorm with their double- capacity brass water-bongs, I secretly want to experience the party life. Who knows, I might be missing out on something by not smoking joints and downing pitchers of beer on the weekends. I'm probably not, of course, but it's always possible that there's a reason people drink and drug themselves to excess.
But the most probable reason I liked DAZED AND CONFUSED--it was a fun movie to watch. Sure, films like SCHINDLER'S LIST and GLORY are brilliantly-mad, but can you have fun watching them? Not unless you're incredibly sadistic. With DAZED AND CONFUSED, you actually get a sympathetic buzz as the characters toke themselves silly on the screen. Amid the scores of movies over the years that have painted a portrait of teenage life, too many of them are angst-ridden, depressing movies about the pointlessness of life. This one is all innocent, illegal fun.
It also portrays the novelty of teenage life more accurately than most other teen nostalgia movies, at least my observations of teenage life. I've never actually considered myself "one of them," but I know exactly how the teen mind operates and what they do for fun, even if I'm absolutely nothing like them. And DAZED AND CONFUSED captures the "Have fun now before it's too late" mentality better than, say, THE BREAKFAST CLUB, which goes out of its way to show that teens from all walks of life have serious problems. I personally don't worry about the future, I'm not depressed, I don't feel the pressure to fit in, so how could I indentify with that movie? No, I've never done the things the DAZED AND CONFUSED characters do, but their outlook suits mine more fully, even if I do have a responsibility they don't.
DAZED AND CONFUSED follows a group of high schoolers on the last day of school in 1976. (One liberated woman teacher tells them, "Remember as you're bombarded with all this bicentennial crap this summer that what you're really celebrating is the fact that a bunch of white, aristocratic, slave-owning males didn't want to pay their taxes.") As next year's seniors, they get to participate in the time- honored ritual of hazing the incoming freshman. While the girls do all sorts of embarrassing activities, the guys get their asses repeatedly paddled. One boy in particular is singled out after his older sister pleads with the seniors to "go easy on him."
The afternoon hazing ritual takes a back seat to the night's party activities, which comprise most of the movie. Proving teen life hasn't come along all that much since the 50's, most of the kids drive around the town aimlessly before some guys finally take the initiative to bring a couple dozen kegs of beer to a hillside water tower. The plot is naturally thin to accentuate the relative pointlessness of the party routine, with the movie instead focusing on the characters, who seem at the beginning of the movie to be your average mindless potheads. We find as the movie progresses that they all have distinctive human qualities.
DAZED AND CONFUSED is, in effect, a coming-of-age movie for some of its characters, the "take it easy on him" boy in particular, who is accepted into the older boys' group after his ass is pummeled. In one night, he gets drunk, high and laid. If that's not a journey worthy of any epic poem's tragic hero, I don't know what is. Still, the movie isn't big on drama or long soliloquies, with the characters undergoing what are, for the most part, subtle changes amidst the celebration. It's not necessarily a funny movie, either. Even though I enjoyed the movie all the way through, I only laughed a few times. It was more fun than funny. I liked the movie, but I don't plan on indulging in any drugs or alcohol in the near future. So much for the assertion that entertainment affects people... I have to go kill my mom now. Slayer told me to.
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